Trains, Trains, Trains

We have been doing so many train activities over the past week but I haven't had much time to blog so I decided to put five of my favorites in one blog post. 

1. Freight Train

This activity I found at teachpreschool.org. After reading Frieght Train by Donald Crews, we set up this train center on one of our tables. 

I used painters tape to make the track and photo copied a picture of the freght train from the book and taped it to the table. I cut out construction paper rectangles for the train cars and set out a bowl of glass stones that the children put on the bottom of the cars for wheels. Most of the children followed the pattern in the picture when they lined up their train cars. 

2. Shape Trains 

For these trains, I cut lots of shapes out of different colored construction paper. I gave the children glue sticks so that they could create their own trains using the precut shapes. 

We also used painters tape to make a railroad track on the side of our castle and taped the trains onto the track.  

   

3. Cardboard Box Train Cars

 We used shoe boxes and small packing boxes with the top flaps removed for this activity. Each child cut up pieces of construction paper and glued them to their boxes. Our class loves to use scissors so the cutting portion of this activity lasted a long time. We did finally get around to gluing the paper scraps onto the boxes. 

After attaching strings to each box, we tried tying all of the boxes together but the children each wanted their own box. In the end, everyone pulled their own single car train around the room filling it with toys along the way. 

 4. Painter's Tape Train Tracks

We went through a lot of painter's tape this week mainly because of this activity. With the children's help, I put strips of tape on the rug all over the classroom and we drove the toy trains on them. Our track went under chairs, around shelves, and even up the door!

 5. Train Conductor's Hat

I found the directions for making these hats at 4crazykings.blogspot.com. We used construction paper for ours (the children chose their own colors) and we added a band with the child's name across the front. Before cutting and folding the papers, the children colored them with markers.